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The North Okanagan Radio Amateur Club

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[Feb 8] Vernon Winter Carnival Parade - Volunteers Needed

The Vernon Winter Carnival consists of 10 days of community events taking place between February 7 and 16, 2020. This year's theme for the carnival is: Vernon Winter Carnival Remembers the 60s.

One of the key events is the carnival parade. For this event, 27th Street is blocked off around 8 AM for a couple of blocks surrounding the WL Seaton secondary school (from 39th Avenue to 43rd Avenue). Between 8 AM and noon, the floats are organized and put in order by volunteers from NORAC, a key sponsor of this event. Via the use of VHF radio communications an efficient organization of the floats takes place.

The parade date is Saturday, February 8, 2020.The organization and staging starts at 8 AM and HAM volunteers are required until 12 noon.The parade starts at 12 noon and runs until 2 PM.

We will again leverage a repeater for our communications, this time around VE7EGO's VHF at 147.380+ in analog FM mode. This allows us to use HTs on their lowest power setting, which will ensure batteries will last all morning with heavy radio activity.

In past years, NORAC members have either met up at Denny's at around 6:30 or 7 AM for a large pre-event breakfast, or at the WL Seaton parking lot for 8 AM to get started on laying out position marking cones and directing floats to their staging areas. Traffic control is handled by traffic control professionals so we radio operators just focus on the organization inside the staging area.

Once the parade starts, we are free to either watch the parade or join it. One year we quickly dressed the Unimog with NORAC banners and with the approval of the organizers, joined in at the rear of the parade, right behind the Dragoons' new armoured tactical vehicle. This year the Unimog has a camper on it's back, so we'll have to determine if and how we will participate in the actual parade event using something other than the Unimog. Further discussion will take place at the January 16, 2020 NORAC club meeting.

This is a great way to not only provide service to our community, but also to practice tactical communications. We welcome all club members and licensed HAMs from the Okanagan, new and old.

For any first-timers, we will go a bit deeper into the "how" of this exercise at the NORAC monthly meeting on January 16, 2020. This event is an exciting way to put your new skills into practice.

To indicate that you wish to volunteer, please contact Nicholas, our club's secretary at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or express your intent at the January 16 club meeting.